| Previous Section | Index | Home Page |
6.14 pm
Ms Diane Abbott (Hackney, North and Stoke Newington): I should like to touch on what the Select Committee's report reveals about issues in the relationship between Government and Select Committees. Although the debate has so far been more about implementation of policy rather than its substance--for which we might be criticised--policy implementation is key both to government and to the reality of government. A three-hour debate spent in examining those issues is therefore warranted.
Obscured by all the sound and fury surrounding the Select Committee's report is the fact that it was a Labour report, which every Labour member of the Committee, and our Liberal Democrat colleague on it, signed. Despite all the talk about partisanship and party political interests, the fact is that it was a Labour report--making it all the more remarkable that there was such fear of it, such a need to have sight of it before the embargo was lifted, and such a need to rubbish it precipitately. It really is extraordinary that a Labour report should excite so much antagonism from a Labour Government.
There never was a golden era in the relationship between Select Committees and Government. For eight years, I served on the Treasury Committee, under the distinguished chairmanship of a series of Tory Chairmen. Let us be quite clear that the previous Government could be just as ruthless and manipulative in their relationship with Select Committees as the Government have been in the past 18 months.
There never was a golden era in the relationship. None the less, when a Government have the majority that my Government have, and when--with the greatest respect to my colleagues--an Opposition are as weak as the current one, the role of Select Committees, as part of the system of checks and balances and of scrutiny, deserves, and perhaps currently is, receiving, far greater emphasis than before.
When a Government have a large majority and a command and control attitude to governance, Select Committees should play a key role in acting as a check and a balance, and in enabling Government policy to be subject to proper scrutiny and examination.
One criticism of the Foreign Affairs Committee was that it produced its report with the benefit of hindsight. I tell Ministers that producing reports in that manner is the exact role of Select Committees. They should consider past events and draw conclusions--which is what the Foreign Affairs Committee quite correctly did in its report.
In the Treasury Committee, we had our fair share of gut-wrenchingly sycophantic Government questioners of Ministers. We had our fair share of reports containing rather bland recommendations, because party political conflicts could not be resolved. We had our fair share also of Chairmen who turned up on the "Today" programme to act as apologists for the Government. However, in that Committee, certainly in the eight years that I served on it, we were always clear about the fact that we were a Committee of the House. We were not an arm of Government.
I should add that, although some things happened in that Select Committee that should not have happened, I served under several Tory Chairmen who were scrupulous in not using their chairmanship to act as apologists for the Government. As a Committee--which included some interesting characters--we were always clear that we were our own Committee, that we were a Committee of the House and that we chose our own agenda. Although some of the recommendations in our reports were fudged, they were always--throughout the Parliaments in which we served--substantial reports in which we made clear arguments.
At the beginning of this Parliament, I was removed from the Treasury Committee. Why? I do not know. Perhaps it was felt that, as I had served on it for eight
years, I might just be capable of making a speech on Treasury matters without a brief from Millbank. Of course, that would never do.
Mr. Mackinlay:
It will be the Catering Committee for you next.
Ms Abbott:
Perhaps, if I am here after the next general election. However, as long as I am an hon. Member, I intend to fulfil my role as an independent Back Bencher.
I was removed from the Treasury Committee and appointed to the Foreign Affairs Committee, under the very distinguished chairmanship of my hon. Friend the Member for Swansea, East (Mr. Anderson). However, as soon as I was appointed to the Foreign Affairs Committee--despite the manifold experience, expertise and brilliance of my colleagues--I sensed in the air something that was very different from the atmosphere in which the Treasury Committee had operated. It was the notion that, in some sense, the Foreign Affairs Committee was a branch of the Foreign Office. During my first few weeks on the Select Committee I was charmed and delighted that the entire Committee was called to lunch with the Foreign Secretary. In my eight years on the Treasury Committee we had never been called to lunch with a Treasury Minister. We all trooped into lunch and the Foreign Secretary gave us the benefit of his views on what we should be doing. It turned out that he thought that we should be travelling to far-flung corners of the globe and staying there and building good personal relationships with obscure Wisconsin Congressmen.
I was interested to hear the Foreign Secretary's views on what the Select Committee should be doing, but I was not entirely clear what business it was of his. I am afraid that it was my voice that piped up at that lunch, as it has at many subsequent Committee meetings, to say to the Foreign Secretary, "We are a Committee of the House and it is not clear to me why you are giving us the benefit of your thoughts on what we should be doing."
That is not a criticism of any colleagues or even of any Ministers, but I just caught in the air a sense that the Committee was some sort of branch of the Foreign Office and that we were good for entertaining 10th ranking dignitaries from obscure central European states and that was about it. Having served for eight years on a different sort of Select Committee, I came to the Foreign Affairs Committee with the clear notion that, above all, we had to struggle for our independence and to be taken seriously.
It is not enough for colleagues to wail about the Sierra Leone affair and about the fact that the Tories are making political capital out of it. What on earth are we to expect Tories to do? It is their job. Ministers must understand why they are back on the Floor of the House two years after the event having to answer for their activities.
Some unkind members on the committee--not me or my colleagues--refer to some of the Ministers' aides-de-camp as Haldeman and Erlichman. I will not do that today. If one asks Ministers--even if one were to ask Haldeman and Erlichman--they will say that this issue has run on because the Tories are making political capital. Hello, what are the Opposition supposed to do? If they are asked again, they might say that someone is a troublemaker or that someone is bitter because he or she
is not a Minister. The one thing that Ministers and their aides-de-camp will not address is the very real issue about the relationship between the Executive and the legislature that has been raised in the long-running battle between the Select Committee and the Government.
For as long as they content themselves with ad hominem attacks, things will not change. I was telephoned by a journalist yesterday who told me that people at the Foreign Office have an arsenal of personal information that they want to release about me as part of a fight-back against the Foreign Affairs Committee. I must tell the House--it is no big secret--that, since having my son seven years ago, I have led a private life of stupefying dullness, but I wish them luck in their attempt. [Interruption.] My hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham (Mr. MacShane) may laugh.
The problem that Ministers have with the Select Committee does not concern individuals, and it is not about bad luck or about the Opposition wilfully doing what they are supposed to do, which is to oppose. It is their own unwillingness to recognise that Select Committees have a right, an obligation and a duty to act independently. They have a duty to determine their own agenda. On Sierra Leone, the Select Committee had a duty to produce the report that it did. It was wrong and provocative of Ministers to imply that we did not need to produce the report, that we discovered nothing new and that the report was in some sense worthless. That is not the way to build a constructive relationship with the Select Committee.
Much has been said about the content of the report, which is important, but my argument to the House and to Labour colleagues is that if Ministers learn nothing by having to turn up and answer for themselves so long after the event, they must learn something about the right way to conduct relationships with the legislature. Select Committees are not an arm of Government. I shall touch on some of the pressure points of the relationship between Select Committees and the Government on which it is worth my right hon. and hon. Friends on the Treasury Bench reflecting.
Under this Government--it is not a new phenomenon, but it is intensified--we have seen an attempt to make the Whips Office writ run inside Select Committee meetings. We have had undue interference--it is passed now but I want to put it on the record--about who should be the Chair of Select Committees. I served on the Treasury Committee for eight years. During every Parliament we got winks and nods about who the usual channels had agreed should be the Chair. Twice running, my Select Committee ignored those winks and nods and we made our own choice. The Whips knew that they could advise, hint and suggest, but they could not make us appoint a Chair whom we did not want. I know of a Select Committee--it was not mine--where the Labour Whips went as far as holding a meeting inside the Committee Room prior to the Committee's first meeting. They had a vote on who should be Chairman and bound Labour Members to it in order to ram through the Chair of their choice.
| Next Section
| Index | Home Page |